


starved (wanton creatures remix)

by to-the-voiceless (larkgrace)



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Dark Knight Questline (Final Fantasy XIV) Spoilers, Established Relationship, F/M, Fantasizing, Masturbation, Mutual Masturbation, Phone Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:08:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24376270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/larkgrace/pseuds/to-the-voiceless
Summary: Hanami woke up dreaming of Ishgard, and she feels sick with it, longing and desire churning in her gut. Such a greedy, terrible creature. Wanton. Wanting.“Shall I tell you of how I have missed you?” Aymeric says.
Relationships: Aymeric de Borel/Warrior of Light
Comments: 9
Kudos: 52
Collections: Final Fantasy XIV - Aymeric de Borel x WoL Recommendations





	starved (wanton creatures remix)

**Author's Note:**

> this is an alternate ending/rewrite of a fill for the wondrous tails challenge (read the original [here](https://to-the-voiceless.tumblr.com/post/617159313162747904/starved)) because i realized halfway through that i could either make it sad or make it smut, and i went with the sad. then i went back and wrote 6k of porn.

Hanami spends a long minute lurking at the edge of the body-crush of Kogane Dori’s sunrise fish market, balancing her covered paper bowl in one hand and fingering the linkpearl cuff in her pocket with the other. Just down the road, the airship landing looms at the fringes of the city skyline: private, a view of the sun rising to kiss the ocean. Inviting. Exposed, but not as much as the walls of the Ruby Bazaar; the magical wards may keep Garlean ears out, but who knows who else Lolorito might _allow_ to listen. She trusts Hancock and his scraping, sneering promises about as much as she trusts a knife at her throat: the only thing reliable about either of them is that they’ll hurt her.

But...she does trust Alphinaud. And he’s had no qualms about calling back to the Rising Stones, to Rhalgr’s Reach, asking after the recovery of the Scions who remain. He trusts the wards, and he’s a better mage than she _wants_ to be. Besides, if Hancock—or Lolorito—decides to start something, she’ll be _glad_ to take the excuse to end it, Sekiseigumi or no. 

Ultimately, the weather makes the decision for her. There’s an early-morning fog rolling through the city, clinging to her through the layers of her clothes, and not even the steaming bowl will be enough to keep her warm if she stays outside. The Bazaar is warmer, if by a small margin, and _dry._ Rather than following the road west to the sea, she turns her steps east, back toward the embassies. 

Reckless, she thinks. _Selfish._ But she woke up cold, and hollow, and wanting.

It’s early enough, the sun just below the eastern horizon, that away from the fishmongers’ row the streets are nearly empty; the Ijin district is a ghost town, but for the Garlean soldiers standing outside their massive, gaudy gates—Hanami manages to avoid snarling at them, but just barely, and the shorter of the guards twitches his hand toward where he would wear a pistol if the city allowed it—and a pair of Sekiseigumi walking a slow patrol down the avenue, who give her a sideways glance as she brushes past. The secretary at the Bazaar’s front desk seems half-asleep over his pile of mail, and waves her in with a tired hand; she makes it down the empty halls and into her shoebox of a guest room without seeing another living soul.

She sits on the bed—no table or chairs, just a nightstand sandwiched between the headboard and the wardrobe—and peels the lid off the paper bowl. The rice is still hot, but not to the point where it will burn her mouth; the smell of vinegar tickles the inside of her nose while she pokes at a chunk of octopus. Her stomach feels hollow, not with hunger but with the anticipation of eating; her chest feels oddly hollow, too, probably for the same reason.

Hanami balances the bowl on her lap and fishes her linkpearl out of her pocket, using the hand not occupied with her chopsticks to hook it over the base of her horn, leaving the pearl itself to dangle a hairsbreadth from the bone. She thumbs the connection open and listens to the tinny ringing noise while she scoops up another bite, quick to prevent spilling, and closes her eyes for the comfortably sour taste. The chill of the fish, just taken from their beds of ice, catches on her teeth.

The ringing noise stops, cut off by a crackling static and a weary, weighty voice saying, “What is it?”

Hanami exhales, her breath catching the column of steam, and though she can see it sputter away from her she feels like she’s inhaled it instead. Warmed from the inside out. “Aymeric,” she says, almost a whisper in the echoing room, and then, feeling stupid: “Hello.”

“Hanami?” The sound is tinny, a little broken with the distance, but even through it Hanami swears she can hear Aymeric’s breath catching, maybe the rustling of papers. Maybe he’s at a desk. His spine would straighten a little at her voice; it always does, when she comes into his office. He still sounds tired, but his voice has lost its rumble, like he’s trying to shake it off. “Is something—are you well?”

“I am fine,” she says, amused by the fact that he thought better of asking _is something wrong,_ to which the answer is _always, somewhere._ “Should I not be?” She tucks away another bite of food and picks at the chain hanging around her neck while she chews, her fingers finding it with easy familiarity even under the glamour.

“Not at all,” Aymeric says. She hears the distant echo of a sigh, not of relief but of movement—settling back in a chair. “You simply took me by surprise. I had not thought to be receiving a call from you, of all people.”

He sounds pleased by it, not upset, but she still frowns. “Did I interrupt you?” It dawns on her, belatedly, that she doesn’t know what time it is in Ishgard. Her sea voyages from Othard to Aldenard have always been too long for her to chart the hours, even if she had the inclination. “What time is it?”

“Late enough that you needn’t worry about disrupting any visitors,” he assures her. At least he is kind enough to point out that it hasn’t stopped her before, but she can still hear the dry undercurrent in his words.

The careful avoidance makes her narrow her eyes, even though there’s nothing here to be intimidated but the walls. “Did I _wake_ you?” He did sound tired, the low rumble of his voice setting her spine shivering with memories of early mornings, of crawling out from between warm bed sheets into the cold dawn. Trust him to answer a linkpearl even in the middle of the night. “What time is it?” she repeats.

He laughs at that, setting off another round of shivers that work their way into her stomach. “Regrettably, no, you did not. I had intended to finish reviewing these last few pieces of correspondence before I retired for the evening.” A pause, and then another sigh, and an admission: “Though I will be retiring for the _morning,_ if I do not do so shortly.”

“You should go to sleep,” she says, automatic disapproval. She constructs another bite of rice and fish, adds a strip of nori and a lump of pickled ginger to the pile atop her chopsticks. “Are you home? Your letters will survive until morning, go to bed.” She could survive the rest of the day, she thinks, on the gentle warmth settled in her abdomen, on the memory of his voice wrapped around her name. She folds the food into her mouth anyway. Tangles her index finger in her necklace.

“And squander this surprise you have so graciously given me? I think not.” The words are crisp with self-satisfaction. “This would not be the first late night I have endured, and for far less pleasant reasons.”

Hanami wants to shove him out of his desk chair—if he’s not at the Congregation then he must be in his study at the Manor, she can see it in her mind—she wants to drag him down the hallway and throw him into the pillows and sit on him until he stops trying to work himself to death. For a horrible second she’s tempted to ride the aether to Foundation and do just that. But she can’t, not really, not just because she is _able to,_ so instead she does the next best thing and says: “Go to bed. Take me with you.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me.” She closes her eyes again, just for a moment, allows her own satisfaction to creep into the underside of her tone. “It should not be hard, unless you have managed to detach your ears from the rest of you.”

His breath sounds bemused, and resigned, when she catches the edge of it over the echoing distance. “Fair enough,” he admits, and then, blessedly, she hears the creak of wood. “I believe I shall do just that, then, if you do not mind the noise. What occupies _your_ time on this fine—morning?”

“Mm,” she says, and looks down at her bowl. It’s just over half full, still, and starting to cool a little; she’s used to eating faster, but warming fish and cooling rice is worth this. “Eating breakfast. Took a walk.” _Wanting,_ she thinks. She tucks away another bite. Her finger catches on the crystal hanging from her necklace, cool against the lingering heat from the food.

“Breakfast?” he asks. There’s another creak, but this time it sounds like hinges. “What would that be, today?” A distant echo of water, brassy and shallow. A basin filling.

“Kaisendon,” she tells him, pressing her wrist to her mouth to disguise her hasty swallow. Habit. Then she frowns, letting the crystal drop back down under her shirt. “Well—here they call it chirashi-zushi, I think. They are almost the same thing.” The vinegar is new, to her at least, but she thinks she remembers her mother making it this way once. The bowls served on festival days were plain rice, but that might have just been the result of rationing.

“Those both came across as ‘seafood-rice,’” Aymeric admits. “I hope the translation was at least somewhat faithful?”

The Echo is almost as useful as it is irritating. She still smiles at his curiosity. “Yes,” she says. “Vinegared rice and fish, mostly. Some egg and spices. Seaweed. You might not like it,” she adds. “It is not sweet like your breakfasts.” She listens to the splashing from his end again, closer, and imagines him washing his face. The sound isn’t deep enough to be a bathtub.

“It sounds delicious, regardless,” he assures her. “What kinds of fish? How is it prepared?”

She bites her lip to keep her smile from growing any more. If the world were a kinder place, he would be a wonderful culinarian. “Octopus, in mine,” she says. “Sea bream. Shrimp. Most of it is raw.”

The splashing abruptly quiets to a tinkling sound of falling drops, as though he has frozen. “Ah,” he says, the apprehension in his voice not totally hidden. “You are...more adventurous than I, it would seem.”

Hanami rolls her eyes a little. “You would like the _fish,”_ she says. “It is all fresh. There is a daybreak market just for the morning catch coming off the boats. You will never find better seafood. Definitely not in _Ishgard.”_

He laughs at that, covering the sound of a gurgling drain. “I will trust your judgement on the matter. Certainly we are somewhat lacking in terms of oceans. I wonder if it would be possible to make an acceptable substitute with skyfish?”

He sounds so, so eager, she presses her fingers flat over her shirt, over the stone and her heart. “I have a feeling you will try no matter what I say,” she tells him.

“Something to occupy my leisure time,” he says. She hears rustling cloth. He wears actual pajama sets, and most of the time she resists the urge to tease him for it. She bites her tongue now, imagining him working his way out of his tunic. Sometimes she steals his night shirts just to see him laugh when they drown her like a dress. His hands are always so gentle when he smooths them over her waist. “What inspired you to break your fast with me, if I may ask?”

Her bowl is empty, and the heat lingering in her palms makes the sunlight trickling through the cracks in the curtains seem unbearably distant. She folds one arm over her own ribs, presses a warm hand to her own waist. Her fingers feel terribly small and rough through the cotton of her shirt. “Nothing special,” she says. She leans forward to deposit the empty bowl on the nightstand, the creak of her own bed springs loud in the early-morning quiet. She toes her sandals off and scoots back to sit against the wall. Tucks her feet up on the mattress. “I—missed you.”

The rustling quiets, settles a little, and his voice crackles through with concern. “Are you sure you’re quite well?” he asks, maybe only half a joke. “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard you so—effusive.”

A lie. She’s said more embarrassing things to him—in his own home, even—though she’s not in the habit of it. She wasn’t half so talkative the last time she saw him, curled up to press into his gentle hand while he held her in her bed in the chirugeons’ tent in Castrum Oriens. She’d buried her face into the curve of his neck instead, clung to his shoulders despite the burning of her fresh scar, let him cling to her in return and stroke her hair free of the sweat on her temples. That is the language she knows best—of action and reaction, eyes and hands, bodies and their works and their gifts so much clearer than the static echoing in her horn.

But she woke up in a bed that felt too empty, too cold, despite being tiny. She woke up to the dark and didn’t even want to roll back over and doze without an arm at her waist, and she took too long to recognize the shapes of the windows. She woke up dreaming of Ishgard, and she feels sick with it, longing and desire churning in her gut. Such a greedy, terrible creature. Wanton. Wanting. 

“I really am fine,” she says, and cups her palm over the soul crystal under her shirt. “I just...wanted to hear your voice.”

She wants Aymeric’s voice. She wants his heartbeat. _Selfish._

He gives a warm hum, breaking through the sound of creaking springs. “I would be happy to oblige you,” he tells her; he has that deep, rumbling tone that he only has when he gets worked up or _incredibly_ relaxed, and it makes her muscles clench tight. “Shall I tell you of how I have missed you?”

Springs groan again. Fabric, denser, rustling. Duvet. He’s in bed, she’s sure of it, and she can picture him burrowing into the nest of pillows and blankets. At his most comfortable she can barely see the top of his head over the covers, but maybe now he’s only pulled them to his chest, mindful of the noise. It sounds like him. If she were there she could stretch out on top of him, feel the vibrations in his chest when he spoke. Drape her tail over his hip. Let him press his mouth to her horn and speak straight into her bones.

She shouldn’t. It’s early, but not _that_ early; surely the Ruby Bazaar had live-in staff who would be waking shortly to start their days, even ignoring Lyse on the other side of the wall, who was a notoriously early riser. The walls might be magically warded but Hanami doubts they’re soundproofed, and if anyone hears her talking, or hears anything _else…_

But she wants. Is wanting. _Wanton creature,_ she thinks again, a little less harsh, and maybe a little less herself, a second, darker voice layered under her own, echoing in something like approval.

“Maybe you should,” she says, and arches to fall back against the wall, stone scratching her back through the cotton of her shirt. Her own bed springs creak under the shift of her body. If she’s not careful, her voice will creak, too. Groan like metal in the heat welling up under her lungs. If Aymeric’s voice is a slither of contentment, hers is a coil of anticipation. 

“Very well,” he says, and the sound makes her imagine a twist to his mouth, something too hot and eager to be called a proper smile. “The nights have been terribly cold without you here.”

“The nights are cold when I am there, too,” she counters. Curls her toes over the edge of the mattress. “I do not change the weather.” _Try again,_ she thinks, a plea. _Tell me how you want me with you._

His laugh is more of a rasp; she hears a soft fabric-noise again, and a creak of wood. Bed posts. The stretch of his body converted into sound. “True enough,” he says. “Though I find the weather infinitely more bearable with you. You’re so warm, I wonder sometimes if I even need the fire.”

She would miss the fire—she can’t stand the morning chill, hissing when the winter creeps in around the edges of the sheets—but they’ve let it burn out a handful of times anyway, occupied with another kind of heat. Good memories. “You would have to keep me warm, too,” she tells him. “I hate the cold.” In the privacy of the Hingan spring morning, she loosens the tie on her obi.

“It would be my genuine pleasure,” he murmurs, and the register his voice drops to sends a shock through her spine, heat lightning shooting down to crackle behind her stomach. She bites her lip, clenches her fingers in her shirt. She is horribly aware of the distance between her knuckles and the insides of her thighs. “Tell me—how I might see to your comfort.” There’s a hitch in his breath, delicious and quiet.

The last time she’d had him in a bed—one that she hadn’t been bleeding in, she thinks, mindful of the hazy hours when he came to her in Castrum Oriens—she’d set him gasping with her teeth at his shoulder, her fingers tracing the cut of his hips, and he’d given as good as he’d gotten. His slender eye teeth were nothing next to the stiletto points of her own canines, hadn’t even left red marks when he’d bitten pleasure into the scales on the dip of her collar, but his _hands—_ his palms were so broad, braced against her legs, thumbs digging into the soft meat of her thighs. He had a hunter’s hands, she would have known him for an archer from his fingers alone, from the slender scar on his index to the calluses on the insides of his knuckles; the bones of his middle finger sat wider than the rest, the demands of war altering the architecture of him, and she had felt every fraction of an ilm of the difference as he drew the tension in her own body tighter than a bowstring until she had finally, mercifully snapped.

“Touch me,” she says, her voice rough. She swallows. “I miss your hands.”

He groans, catching the edge of a laugh, the gravel of it reverberating in her horn, and she slides her own hand under the hem of her shirt, her fingers splaying rough over her ribs. Her obi flutters loose when she slides her palm up, her fingertips inching closer to the undersides of her breasts. “So very demanding,” he chides her, even as she hears his breath coming harsher, another creak of springs from thousands of malms away. “Where would you want my hands?”

_“Everywhere,”_ she hisses, and the shirt seems unbearably stifling now; she grips the hem with her other hand and pulls the whole affair over her head, shedding her layers and cursing when the collar catches on her horn where the linkpearl hangs. Her necklace drops down to land against her chest with a _thud._ The room is cooler than she would like but Aymeric’s answering gasp warms her like heat injected into her veins. “Tell me where you would put them. Tell me where you miss me.”

“Everywhere,” he echoes, and his voice is eager against her impatience. “All of you, always—I could touch you for hours. You seemed to enjoy my hands on your waist, my love, do you remember that?”

His hands, broad and burning through his stolen nightshirt, nails catching on the scales at her sides. She remembers. She lays her own hand there, so small next to the memory of his, runs her palm down over her hip and back up to the swell of her breast, drags her fingertips on the border of her scales and her skin and shivers at the sensation. She falls to the side, stretching out on the bed rather than leaving her back to the cold stone wall, luxuriating in the rich cotton of the sheets on her skin, already prickling with the pleasure of being touched. “I do,” she tells him. “You—you picked me up, you put me in your lap.”

Aymeric rasps another laugh. The springs are groaning more frequently on his end, now, and there’s no more fabric sound; she imagines him with the sheets kicked down to his toes, the way he does when he wakes early and tugs her by the waist to smother him. “You put yourself there so often, I thought to— _ah,_ expedite the process. I could never have managed it if you didn’t want to.”

_That_ sends another thrill of black lightning down through her stomach, to the crux of her thighs. Aymeric has a full fulm and a half and some hundred ponzes of mass on her, easily, but he only ever _handles_ her for her enjoyment, pressing her gently into the mattress or the couch or the floor, or lifting her _up,_ against the wall, into his lap, and he holds her so _wonderfully_ by her hips while she takes her pleasure from him—or sometimes, she handles him _back,_ catching him by the shoulders and rolling him beneath her, tossing him onto the bed in turn, pressing him to the wall and holding him in place while she goes to her knees, and from the way he chokes praises into her hair and her neck and her chest he gets just as much of a thrill from her shows of strength.

“You just like me on top of you,” Hanami says. She skims her hand away, down, across her stomach toward the top of her pants. The touch of her fingers at the cotton ties send sparks across her abdomen. 

_“You_ say that as though it is an accusation, and not a simple statement of fact,” Aymeric says. His languid tone makes her toes curl as much as the actual admission; the insides of her legs tingle with sense-memory of the last time she rode him, the muscles of her core fluttering with the urge to clench down. She squeezes her thighs together, instead, and brings her free hand to her mouth to muffle her voice as the pressure prompts a moan. He must hear it anyway; his answering noise is _deliciously_ low, almost covering another round of creaking springs. She tries to picture him, splayed out and gorgeous, the long lines of his muscles flexing, shoulders broad and bare and begging for her to mark them with her mouth—sinks a gentle bite into her palm. “Is that what you would like now?” he asks. “Do you want me under you? I could give you my hands, my mouth—”

Hells take her, she’s wearing too many clothes. She doesn’t even bother to try to hide her moan as she hooks her thumbs into the waistband of her pants, slides them and her smalls down in one motion—scrabbles with the tie at the back to untangle it from her tail—kicks the whole mess off her ankles and somewhere down the bed. The cool air sets her shivering but she can’t find it in her to care; she plants her heels into the mattress with her legs spread far enough that she can run her hands over her own skin. _Fuck,_ if she could spend happy hours writhing on his fingers, she could spend days finding new ways to occupy his mouth. At her neck, his tongue in the dip of scales on her throat; scraping gentle teeth over her breasts; between her thighs, nipping along the edge of the line of scales winding up, _up—_

She bites down on another desperate noise as she pinches her own leg, a shoddy substitute, and brings her other hand up to press her palm flat over her mound. “No,” she tells him, voice embarrassingly breathy with how rapidly the fantasy shifts, memory after searing memory setting her skin on fire. She scrambles to answer his question without entirely being able to recall what he asked. “You said you would keep me warm. We should—stay under the covers—you should _fuck_ me—” She rocks her hips up into her own hand, cuts herself off with a whimper. Curls her fingers to brush over where she’s warm and wet and _wanting._

Aymeric, mercifully, takes her meaning and runs with it, answering her with a loud grunt and another sharp bed-noise; she hopes his body is echoing hers, too, bucking up into his own palm. “Shall I use my fingers first?” he says, and she crooks hers, pressing her own work-callused knuckles to the sensitive skin of her clit and gasping. “Or my tongue? You were _made_ for worship, Hanami, I would gladly give you mine, again and again.” Another pulse of heat through her core, tension winding tighter through her legs; her muscles flutter again and she presses her fingertips firmer against herself.

This man talking of worship with his _sinful mouth_ is going to kill her. “Yes,” she hisses. “Yes, I want—” She chokes on the words, on the wanting, on the thought of Aymeric on his knees, drawing her legs over his shoulders; Aymeric, his beautiful bow-fingers arched inside her, his tongue pressed against her nerves; Aymeric, speaking his filthy worship straight into her. Hanami keens, tries to muffle it into her free hand as she rocks into her palm once, twice, slips her own fingers in and _grinds—_

When she comes it feels less like a release of tension and more like a full-body shudder that lasts too long. She clamps down on her fingers, bites her own wrist to muffle the loudest of her noises as her vision blurs out and she arches up off the bed: her back, her shoulders, her legs, all coiling tight and slowly coming loose as she presses down on her clit, riding out the shivers.

Through her pulse slowing in her horns, she hears Aymeric’s hoarse approval. “Already?” He’s breathless, the rough edges of his breath almost drowned out by Hanami’s own panting as her heart rate calms. “I’m not sure if I should be flattered or insulted. Usually you take longer than that, my light.” She can hear his grin, like a coeurl in the cream; pictures him pressing his smile into her jaw, the way he so often does when she shakes apart around him.

She grunts in answer, not a sound of arousal but of frustration, this time, as the sparks settle under her skin and begin to prickle again. “‘M not _done,”_ she says, removing her hand from her mouth to throw her arm over her face, blocking out the light streaming into her eyes. She _does_ usually take longer, teasing out her pleasure, hard and long and far more satisfying. The sheets at her back feel rough against her skin, now, her body too sensitive and irritable. She grumbles her wordless annoyance, Aymeric answering with a sympathetic sort of noise, staccato with his harsh breathing. She just...it had been so long, well over a moon and a half between her time in Gyr Abania and the sea voyage, and not even her imagination can match to Aymeric’s sonorous voice. She’s gone without for longer but never when she had something she _missed_ so badly. And now her impatience and greed has landed her here, alone in a cold, strange room, on the wrong side of the shittiest orgasm she’s had in a decade. _Ugh._ She can’t decide if she’s more embarrassed or pissed off.

“How can I help, love?” he murmurs, and she winces as she removes her hand from between her legs, splaying her fingers across her stomach instead. “Do you want to keep going?”

Not if he’s going to keep inflicting that voice on her, she doesn’t. Her core clenches again, not nearly as pleasant. “No,” she says, squirming, stretching her legs, shaking out her sticky hand.

His breath is slowing, through the linkpearl, more silent than he’s been since they started; she feels both _immensely grateful_ and spectacularly irritated. One of them should get something good out of this. “Do you want to _stop?”_ he asks.

_“No,”_ she snaps, because she’s still simmering and aching and _wanting_ and if she has to walk out of the room feeling like this she’s going to kill someone. “I want…”

So much. She wants to come again, she wants to go back and cut off the call before she ever touched herself, she wants to ride the aether to Ishgard and crawl into bed and let Aymeric’s masterful hands and patient tongue take her to pieces from the inside out. Selfish, wanting, wanton—

Lightning again, black and promising, flickering down her back and pooling into fire at the base of her spine, dancing across her fingertips, hot and delectable. _Selfish,_ she thinks, and it feels like thinking in an echo, like a second, darker voice beneath it all.

Braced atop her ribs, over her racing, greedy heart, her soul crystal flickers with heat. The warmth oozes through her, like magma, like familiar, rough hands brushing away the prickles under her skin. 

“Tell me what you need, Hanami,” Aymeric pleads, and Hanami takes a deep, shuddering breath, pressing her arm tighter over her eyes until flashes of light spark behind her lids.

“A minute,” she gasps. “I need a minute.”

The fire licks at the inside of her, soothing her own incessant heat, and Aymeric gives a soothing hum. “All the time you need, love,” he promises, still with a ragged edge to his voice but no longer quite as breathless. “Do you have anything with you that might help?”

“No,” she mutters. Her toys are all still boxed up in the back of her dresser in the Rising Stones; she didn’t take them with her to Rhalgr’s Reach, too busy with the Resistance to take time to herself and sleeping in communal barracks to boot, and they hadn’t crossed her mind when she was packing for their voyage to Hingashi. It wasn’t like the cabins on the _Misery_ offered more than the thinnest illusion of privacy anyway. “You should tell me what you were thinking of,” she says instead, bringing her hand up to rest over her heart, the soul crystal burning into her palm even with the glamour to deaden the sensation. “Before I finished.”

“Are you sure?” he asks. Hanami curls her toes again, flexes her feet, stretches out her legs to unbend her knees while the fire works its gentle way through her veins. “I would hate to cause you discomfort.”

“Yes,” she says. “I want to hear you.”

“Mmm…” Aymeric must stretch too, or shift; she hears background creaking again as his voice burns into her alongside the fire from her soul crystal. “I was thinking of your hair.”

“My hair?” She finds herself startled into stillness, despite the warmth trailing through her body, urging her to move again. She thinks, wildly, of the night before they set sail, when she knelt over a basin in her inn room and worked a bottle of terebinth into her hair to strip out the pink dye; she still finds herself doing double takes when she walks past mirrors, unused to seeing her natural coloring for the first time since she was a teenager. Did she mention it to Aymeric? She doesn’t think she did.

“It’s so striking,” he tells her, low and languorous and unbearably loving, and despite herself Hanami moves the arm draped over her eyes to stifle a smile into her wrist. “You look like nothing less than a spring rose”—a joke he’s made before, and it is _still_ in poor taste, but before she can tease him for it he says—“even if it did clash something _dreadful_ with the dress you wore to our first dinner.”

This _man._ She stifles something between a scoff and a growl into her arm. “I did not have much to work with,” she tells him. “You could have given me more time.”Not that he had complained about her attire at all. Bared arms were probably bordering on indecent in Ishgard, even without the weather, and though she had worn stockings underneath the slit up the skirt had been more daring than anything she would normally have worn. She’d wanted a dress from home, though, and that had been the closest thing she had been able to wrangle out of Rowena. The red really hadn’t worked with her hair, but she didn’t need to admit it so easily.

“I felt it best to seize the moment, as it were,” he says. “You _were_ stunning, regardless...I found myself driven to distraction. You toy with your hair so much, when you wear it up, I can hardly stop looking at you. I spent the entire evening wanting to find out if it was as soft as it looked.”

“So you did notice.” She smiles, tilts her head to feel her hair brush across the back of her neck now; there was something deeply pleasing about commanding his eyes, watching his gaze follow her fingers over her shoulder and up and down her arm while she fidgeted, even when he was acting a perfect gentleman otherwise. “Took you long enough.” Maybe she won’t tell him about stripping out the dye—she could wait until she saw him again, until she could feel his appreciative eyes in person. The fire takes up residence under her breastbone, sweeping away the last of the aches and creeping down toward her navel.

“Forgive me for not rising to the challenge sooner,” he says.

“You like my hair,” she urges him, sliding her hand down to cup her breast. “Is it as soft as you hoped?” She knows it is; she takes good care of it, works sweet oils into the ends after she bathes, but she wants to hear him say it.

He makes a low, desperate sound. “Softer than a dream,” he says. “I miss being able to run my fingers through it. You make the most wonderful sounds when I do. It looks so lovely when you let it down, against your skin and your scales.”

_Tell me more,_ she thinks again in that desperate doubled voice. She wants him to paint her a picture, to prompt her sense-memories; she raises her hand again, to scratch at her own scalp, and shivers at the sensation. His hands feel _electric_ in her hair, always such a delicate touch even when his grip on her body is bruising, teasing out her whimpers with gentle tugs and soft strokes. He likes to play with it while he reads, sometimes, to drive her to distraction; even if he doesn’t touch her elsewhere she could lay there under his attention for hours, but when he does in tandem with his clever, tender fingers worshiping her she always wants to tip her head into his hand and moan—

She does, now, and Aymeric’s voice stutters. “You sound much improved,” he says, with a wry, delighted laugh. Hanami runs a nail over her nipple, shuddering at the touch, just the right side of overwhelming this time. “Shall I tell you of how your hair glows spread out over the sheets, or how it feels on my skin when you—” He cuts off with a groan, and the movement noises under his voice pick up their tempo, an echo of her racing heart.

“Keep talking,” she says, and arches up into her own fingers; her other hand, still resting on her stomach, begins to slide toward her hips again. She feels _blazing._

“If only I could see you now,” he says, ragged but no less reverent; Hanami thinks for a moment her heart will beat its way through her ribcage as she runs her fingers over her core again. She shudders at the sensation, the liquid fire pouring down, pooling between her legs. She can feel her muscles twitch when she presses a work-roughened fingertip in. “What would you have of me, if I could?”

If he could _look at her—_ her vision darkens at the corners of her eyes, or maybe her eyes are just slitting shut, the way his do when he _looks at her,_ and his eyes might not glow the way hers do but when he looks at her in low light, in the privacy of mornings in his bed, of evenings on the sofa, she would swear they shine anyway. The ridges of his cheekbones put her in mind of cut diamonds but she has yet to find a stone on three continents that matches the color of his eyes. Just seeing him watch her is enough to make her squirm, most times, and the memory of his awe along with _that voice…_

Her whole body shivers, and she says, “I want your fingers in my hair, I want _you_ in _me—_ Aymeric, I told you to _fuck me—”_

At the sound of his name he moans, a long, broken sound, and Hanami shudders in answer—begins to fuck _herself_ in earnest with her fingers. She keens when she bears down on her own knuckles; if her hands are small next to the thought of his, they’re nothing next to the memory of his cock, heavy and hot enough to leave her breathless even when he starts so gentle, like he’s afraid to break her, even though he of all people should know better; if he doesn’t pick up his pace fast enough she’ll hook her ankles around the small of his back and rock up onto him, set her own tempo until his hips catch the rhythm she needs. Until the metronome-rock of their bodies splinters her. 

“I will,” he pants, “I will, Hanami, I would give you—” and he groans again rather than finish the thought, but she can envision it, his shoulders bowed over her body and his hands spreading her legs, hiking them up over his perfect hips; his eyes shutter closed when he’s this close to coming and he _must_ be, the way his voice is quavering, the way the wood-noises of the bed under him are non-stop in her horn. She chokes and pictures him lunging forward to bury his face in her chest, her neck, his hair tickling her skin, his teeth sinking into her while he fucks her, hard and strong and _hot._ She drags her fingers over her own inner walls and pinches the seam of scale and skin where it crawls down her sternum, whines again in pleasure—in impatience—it’s not _enough,_ her hands aren’t _enough_ when she wants—

“—anything,” Aymeric moans. “Whatever you would ask of me—”

_“Idiot,”_ she hisses, working her fingers, curling and spreading, “all I want is _you—”_

If the sound of his rapture was persistent, the noise of his release is _insistent,_ nearly deafening in her horn even if he’s not all that loud. Another eager, rumbling moan, broken by a gasp, a violent creaking noise—hips, lifting from the mattress, canting into hands, she can _see_ it—and a croak of what must be her name, warped and muffled by his mouth shaping around satisfaction. Her hands spasm, her palms itching with the need to touch him, and her core clenches tight, needing to be filled beyond what her feeble fingers can offer, even with her calluses pressed against her most sensitive spots; Hanami thinks for a horrible moment that she might _cry_ in desperation—

The black lava pooling in her spine pierces down, _through_ her, shocks her insides like a body-stroke, like hands that know her as well as her own—

Her back arches from the sheets and her thighs clamp together on her hand, her whole body shuddering and spasming as the darkness toying at the edges of her vision overtakes her, hot and sharp and so brilliant she almost mistakes it for light. Her mouth opens, she thinks, but she doesn’t know if she makes a sound, gasping as she is as the pleasure rolls through her again, and again, and again, until the shadow over her sight becomes something more natural, a blissful blackout.

When her sight returns, Hanami is still gasping, her hand still caught between her legs even as her body’s death-grip begins to relax. Through the echoing din of the linkpearl, she can hear Aymeric’s harsh, contented breaths, slowing just a half-second ahead of her own. She grunts her quiet discontent as she frees her own hand and it comes away wet enough to chill in the air.

Aymeric must hear her, for he exhales a questioning groan. “Better, my light?” he asks, still airy and rumbling. He sounds like he’s melting. She feels like she is, too. The last of the fire still seems to simmer at the base of her, no longer urgent but lingering. Her soul crystal smolders.

“Yes,” she rasps, working her jaw to ease the tension. “Much. Thank you.”

_Don’t make a habit of it,_ she hears, and though it’s in her head it sounds less like her voice than like the spitting of a fire, and the heat slowly evaporates.

Aymeric gives a slow, sated laugh. “Thanking me? Goodness. I suppose that was more satisfactory, then.”

She hums in thought, rocking over to lay on her side. She wonders if there’s a towel handy, or if she’ll have to dig in her bag. “Eh,” she says, maybe a little rougher than intended. She’s tempted to shrug for emphasis even though he can’t see it. He makes a mocking-wounded noise in answer, but before he can speak she adds, “Not as good without you here.”

“I’m afraid we are in agreement, then,” he murmurs. “Once again I find myself lamenting that I must rely on the fire to keep me warm, rather than you.”

With the heat from her arousal cooling, her soul crystal simmering down, Hanami finds herself shivering atop the covers. “And I am still cold,” she informs him. With a grunt, she levers herself upright; she needs a towel, and pants, preferably in that order, and a _long_ bath if she has time before she’s due to hunt down Lyse’s fisherman contact. Her own drying sweat prickles on her collarbones. The room seems echoing, despite the fact that it’s a glorified closet; she feels oddly bereft.

Aymeric offers another low croon; the bed springs creak again, soft, like a resettling. If she were there she could burrow into his arms and feel his satisfaction echo through her horns. “Would that I could offer you more comfort,” he says. “Though I fear I am keeping you from your obligations, whereas I have”—his words warp around a yawn—“something of a mess to clean up.” A louder creak.

“Sounds like something that is not my problem,” she tells him, biting down on a tired grin despite herself. She finds the towel she had left draped over the coat hook the night before and stumbles toward the door to retrieve it, wiping off her sticky hand. “You should go to sleep.”

“I _was_ in bed,” he reminds her, and though she’s keeping her own smile in check she can almost _hear_ the smirk in his voice. She hears running water again, the splashing of something under the stream. Probably a washcloth. “And you are being _exceptionally_ cruel. Not even a kind word, in place of your presence?”

His sleepy teasing means she laughs when she wipes at the tacky spot between her legs, instead of hissing. “I already said I want you,” she says. She hears his breath catch; wonders if it’s from the touch of the water or from her. “Do not tempt me. I have _obligations.”_ She throws the word back at him in a half-hearted mockery of his accent, and he laughs.

“Mm…” The water shuts off; Aymeric’s voice takes on that rumble again when he says, “Then when you return, I shall simply have to _oblige_ you until we are both content, as befits a man of my noble standing.”

Hanami finds herself frowning at a lilt in his voice as she retrieves her smalls from the end of the bed, but it takes her a long moment—long enough to tug them back on and begin working at the half-undone ties on her trousers—to recall a hazy memory, some lecture on etiquette she’d half-listened to Aymeric giving a spoiled lordling. “Was that a joke?”

“A terrible one,” he admits, snickering, and she groans in what she means to be anger but which comes out sounding closer to despair.

“You are disgusting,” she says. Finishes tugging on her pants. “Go to sleep. You are stupid after sex.”

“You do inspire a certain degree of foolishness in me,” he laughs. “How very _blessed_ I am that you suffer this fool.”

She frowns when she retrieves her shirt—the layers tangled in her careless removal. She begins to disassemble them across the bedspread. “I will suffer you _something_ if you do not _sleep,”_ she says. Between the many layers of the shirt and Aymeric’s sated, exhausted voice, she can’t quite find it in her to construct a more coherent threat. 

“Very _well,”_ he murmurs, the strain of his yawn overtaking the sarcasm. Hanami might feel bad about keeping him awake this long, if she were a less selfish person. “Then I suppose you shall go about your business, whilst I get to the business of dreaming?” 

“Mm-hmm.” She can’t manage much else, her mouth muzzled by the collar of her undershirt as she pulls it back over her head. She has to tug it free of her horns; hopes it doesn’t make too much noise on his end. She starts to shrug on the outer layers, says, “I hope they are good dreams.”

(He has so few of those, she knows, even if he won’t talk about it. She wonders if his sleep has worsened as badly as hers since she left. To think that he has become so ingrained in her life that she feels his absence this keenly.)

“I should think so, with you to send me to slumber,” he says. She bites her lip, tries to ignore the heat she feels creeping up her chest—not arousal, but embarrassment. _This man._ “Perhaps”—he pauses for a moment, and she hears the creaking and rustling of him crawling under the sheets again; she feels the morning chill all the more keenly for it—“I shall dream of that first dinner. Or perhaps I shall plan one for your return.” 

“You do not get to make fun of me if my dress does not match my hair,” she says. Wraps her obi carefully in place.

“I would never dream of mocking you,” he promises. Another, softer rustle. “Though I _could_ dream of it.”

Hanami feels very foolish, despite being alone, when she sinks down to sit on the bed again. “Dream of the dress, or the dinner?” she asks.

“Dream of you,” Aymeric says. “The details matter little.”

And that—

She pulls her feet up onto the mattress, tucking her knees against her chest. If she curls tight enough maybe it will make up for the yawning distance that she can feel every ilm of, in this moment.

“Okay,” she whispers, into the dim, cold room, so much smaller than the one she _wants_ and yet so much more empty. “Dream of me.” And one final, selfish plea, so much more intimate and ruinous than his hands or his mouth could ever be: “I love you.” 

She hears his delight, and his surprise, not in his voice but in his breath, a little hiccup of happiness amidst the sound of rustling blankets and pillows. It’s not something she says. He knows it already. She knows he does. But if she can’t be there to show him with her fingers at his brow or her mouth at his shoulder, she’ll have to settle for her clumsy words in his ear. 

“As I love you,” he says, slow and muffled at the edge of sleep. “Be safe?”

Hanami swallows. Her throat feels thick. “As I ever am,” she says. Not much of a reassurance, but it’s the best promise she can offer. “Goodnight, Aymeric.”

“And a good morning to you, beloved,” he says, warm enough to resonate through her and settle in her chest, curled around her bruise-tender heart. “Thank you.”

She thumbs off the connection with a huff, and without the static of the linkpearl the room seems impossibly huge and cold. She presses her forehead to her bent knees and exhales a hot stream of air over her legs. Until she can get back, fold herself back into the fire, it will have to be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> endless thanks to the fine folks at the [book club](https://discord.gg/9h2scPZ), who offered encouragement and sweat emojis by the bucketloads. i straight up would not have finished this without you all.


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